DAYDREAMS & GEOLOGICS 2008-2014

Daydreams and Geologic Portraits

2008 - 2014

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Daydreams + Geologic Portraits

The portion of this period called Daydreams convey moods like when you gaze out from waking from a nap in the Mediterranean, or something that might be nice for someone ill to be looking at. These paintingsbring peace-of-mind to the viewer. A visit to the beach does that for a lot of people. Many of these paintings feature sun umbrellas. Sun umbrellas are cheerful. They can also stand for someone being there or not being there. That brings a sense of isolation, or loneliness to the reading of the piece, an enigmatic tension. They also spice up the change of scale and add an anecdotal element - like a hook in music - that allows people access to the piece. With the umbrellas there's a type of scene that goes down easy, that anyone can get into in different ways.

And then the minimalist format - the complexity with the purity and simplicity - and the three divisions. Most people however read minimalism as oblique and pretentious. I am amazed that people enjoy the beach when it's the most minimal landscape imaginable - a horizon line and sky. Of course there's so much more (wind scent mystery sun vastness etc.) but I thought compositionally it would be exciting to do something as

compelling - something both minimal and maximal. A simple purity, but not dull.

These works are intimate yet expansive, beautiful dreamy moments. In ‘Beach’ I’ve put portraits of my daughters in similar settings, and ramped-up the scale to create a more immersive experience.

Another avenue of this phase is a compendium of many styes I've developed through the years, recombined and taken further. I'm painting things I love - like my daughters - and 'hanging paintings upon them' in ways I love to paint. They are an extension of my earlier Geologic Portrait series, which are the line drawings on wood surrounded by what I think of as geologically deep layers built up over time, such as the painting titled "Tanja Gompf". Those fields in relief surrounding the figures I think of as abstracted geologic formations, but contain other references as well.